Furious Ladybarn residents who rely on B&M slam bid for 115 new homes and fear 'horrendous' parking problems

Developer Triple Jersey Ltd secured planning permission to build 115 houses and flats on the B&M Burnage superstore, next to Mauldeth Road railway station in Ladybarn, last Thursday (February 20).

It was Triple Jersey’s second attempt to build an estate on the site. Plans for 112 homes were withdrawn in 2023 after local councillors, including city leader Bev Craig, voiced their opposition.

Now, the firm has been given the green light to build the homes — despite councillors and residents hitting out at the proposals, as have furious residents.

“You are talking about people needing doctors, dentists, hospitals, and schools. Everything has got to be there,” said Jean Smith, 72, speaking after planning permission was granted.

She’s called Mauldeth Road West home for 48 years, and has worries about parking: “We have a horrendous time here with parking. With the mosque, people can park across my drive… I only object when they do not bother asking.”

Her husband, Dan, added he was aggrieved with parking because ‘we all had to pay to get the drop curbs, H-bar, and build our own drives to get our cars off the road’ when he moved in.

Neighbour Vivien Powell, 75, also had worries about parking, but felt for employees affected.

“I’ve been right against it,” she explained. “I enjoy going to that shop, I know the staff there.”

Parking was a bugbear of Gary Murphy, who said he’d had ‘a BMW, Range Rover, and Jaguar written off’ while being parked on Mauldeth Road West as they were ‘smashed into’.

Mary Beirne, 80, who lived in her home nearby for 61 years recognised ‘we need housing’ but added: “This road is already very, very busy. It’s extremely busy after the building is done. It will cause a hell of a lot of traffic.”

Permission was given even after local councillor Murtaza Iqbal said approval would ‘remove something people rely on’.

“We are under-served in Burnage with just one [shop] already and Tesco just over the border in Didsbury,” Coun Murtaza Iqbal told the planning committee last week. “It’s not the removal of a shop. It’s the removal of something people rely on.

“This plan feels out of step with the rest of the area. The five-storey block will overshadow houses.

“It must provide real benefits and not profits for developers. We can and should expect better.”

Although it is ‘a shame to lose a store that’s well valued’, planning rules ‘offered no protection’ to B&M ‘because it’s out of [a town] centre’, according to senior council officer Des Jones. That meant the planning committee could not block the application to save B&M.

They also could not prevent the application going through over affordable housing worries, as Triple Jersey ‘voluntarily’ included eight affordable homes. Legislation says they are only legally required to do so if a project is expected to make 20 percent profit.

Councillors voted eight to three in favour to greenlight the application.